


Triad

by Domimagetrix



Series: Razwan Bahir, World Guardian [15]
Category: Runescape
Genre: Adult Language, Degrading/Insulting, Deviates From Canon, Headcanons Everywhere, Implied Sexual Content, Kebbit Orgy, Manipulative Relationship, Multi, Purity-Oriented Shaming, Semi-Public Sex, Sex, Sexual Coercion, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide Attempt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-05 11:26:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14043246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domimagetrix/pseuds/Domimagetrix
Summary: The Menaphos fic for Razwan's canon. Featuring headcanons about gems, Teragard, Oreb, Nomad... and kebbits.





	1. Preparation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lies, bargains, secrets, and dubious plans.

_Llevame contigo, guardame un lugar_  
_Cerca de tu corazón_  
_Dejame tenerte, dejate querer  
Antes de que pierda la razón_

 

Aleks Syntek y La Gente Normal - “Sin Ti”

 

The bed moved as its other occupant crawled over me and padded away. It wasn’t Sliske-weight shifting the mattress, nor were Sliske-feet moving across the carpet, but no alarms sounded in my head. They were familiar sounds and feelings. I began drifting off again.

I heard cloth move as Quen returned to the bedroom. Sleep-blurriness didn’t offer much detail; I caught a narrow glimpse of dark blue light before the partition fell shut. It felt like some time had passed since he’d left.

It was too fucking early to be awake. I didn’t mind. Quen was here now, and waking this way was preferable to Sliske’s counterfeit brand of domesticity. The Mahjarrat hadn’t deigned to make an appearance last night, and I didn’t mind that, either. We’d made good use of the time.

There was more Sliske-less time to be had.

Reaching a hand out from beneath the cover, I tugged on his pants leg as he passed. “You need exercise, old man.”

The same leg bent with knee resting on the bed while the other swung up and over me. Long-fingered hands pressed the blanket down on either side. Quen inclined himself and kissed me. There was a curiously sweet, fruit-and-chocolate flavor to the kiss.

His elbows straightened as he pulled away, wisps of luminescent soul magic stirring in new shapes around his eyes with the reversal. “That will have to wait. There’s something we need to discuss.”

I squirmed discontentedly under the confines of the blanket. “We did enough discussing yesterday. What we _need_ is for you to get more of whatever was in your mouth so I can put some on you. Then lick it off.”

A side of that curiously-flavored mouth quirked in an almost-smile. “I’m afraid that was the last of it. There is, however, this.” He shifted to rebalance his weight and lifted one of his hands.

A key glittered in the low lamplight. Gold rimmed a green gem set in the bow and traced the shoulder, trailing off into some sturdier, duller metal where teeth and tip protruded from it. Light slid along that bow, twinkling where tiny dents marred the gilding. It looked old. It also looked valuable.

I looked from it to Quen. “Have you had it appraised yet?”

He shook his head, easing back into a kneel and partially freeing me from the blanket trap. “This isn’t treasure. It’s an invitation.”

I grinned. “I accept. Let’s go lock me into whatever that opens.”

He sighed. “It isn’t an invitation from me. Nor is it from Sliske, before you ask. Someone else.”

“I’m not sure I can handle someone else. I can barely handle either of you.” I wormed my elbows back and push-slid myself into a sitting position, legs crossing. “Who?”

His fingers twirled and threaded the key between each other in a pretty display of dexterity. He was nervous, although his voice remained steady. “Someone more dangerous than either of us. Or Sliske.” The key stopped its dance, resting balanced atop two extended fingers. “Do you remember the memory imprints I showed you? Edgeville, Varrock, beneath the Soul Wars fields?”

I nodded, gaze flicking between his face and the key. I wanted to see it dance again. “It’d take a mean feat of magic to make me forget.” _And that was understating the case._ “This is about your past? Someone from before?”

The key tilted and swayed as Quen’s fingers moved, rocking like a Fremennik barge over unsteady waters. “The worst possible someone. This key was delivered to me through one of his anjuman. One of his soul-bonded hench-creatures.”

“Soul-bonded… oh.” My eyebrows furrowed. “But you killed him. I saw him impaled on your staff. Your… other staff.”

He gave me the look I deserved. “What I killed must have been another anjuman.” The key stilled. “One he’d invested more in, since this was a human rather than an animal. The loss of that man had to’ve damaged him enough to go into hiding and recuperate, but it would seem he’s confident enough in his recovery to reveal himself.”

Quen’s fingers closed around the base of the key. “The raven delivering this spoke in the Menaphite language of old, or at least replicated it well enough to leave no doubt in my mind. He is anjuman. Oreb’s.”

There would be no returning to sleep this morning. I began undoing my braid. “What are the anjuman? Wights?”

He winced, twin cerulean lights narrowing. “No, they aren’t undead or pseudo-undead as I was. It _is_ a soul-affliction, however. In this case, a piece of Oreb’s own soul is separated from the greater mass and fused with the anjuman’s soul, subsuming it.” The wince disappeared. “He prefers creatures associated with death. Ravens, for the most part, but desert dogs in their distant relation to Icthlarin, scorpions, and sometimes wolves. Snakes. He can create human anjuman, too, but the process is difficult and he loses a sizeable portion of his own soul when creating one.”

I stopped undoing my braid. “That makes absolutely no sense. If he’s lacking so many pieces of his soul, isn’t he vulnerable?”

Quen shook his head. “Not as you or I. There was one lesson I never received during my time as Charron’s student, and that was his ability to blend the essence of soul energy into himself divorced from the person’s unique configuration.” He tapped his bare chest. “Within me are the souls of thousands, but they’re complete souls and assembled haphazardly. If their ties - the soul strings that bound them to their source body - were many, then they are still many within me. Same with those who had few or thin ties, or stout ones.” His hand joined the other one holding the key between his knees. “It’s a mess in there. Power in plentiful supply, but no matter how depleted, the soul’s husk remains attached to the rest of the mass. His is uniform. No husks. It’s all his, no matter how many he consumes.”

He spoke matter-of-factly, but the image he’d drawn made me ill. “Yours is like Gielinor was.”

He nodded. “Like that in essence, yes. Had my construct been of Oreb’s make, you wouldn’t have found it so easy to defeat. Nor would Icthlarin have been able to divide the souls and maintain their individual integrity.”

 _So easy to defeat?_ I bit back the snide remark and opted for another question. “So what do these anjuman do? Besides home deliveries, I mean.”

A trace of tension left Quen’s features. “He can hear and see through them, if he chooses to focus. They don't act as secondary eyes and ears unless he’s piloting them. He can speak through those capable of speech. Imperfectly in most cases, but enough to be understood provided the anjuman has any physical capacity for it. When he’s not focused on one, I’m given to understand they behave as their normal animal counterparts do. For the human… I don’t know.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard him admit ignorance, but it was still strange. I tapped the exposed part of the key in his hand. “So why are the two of us accepting his invitation?”

“Three.” He looked grim. “This is going to require Sliske, too. As for why - to give him additional time to perfect whatever he’s planning would be foolish. His mastery of soul magic dwarfs mine, and his methods…”

I remembered Tammen. My hand left the key and covered his. “Fair enough. But why Sliske?”

“It will test your patience and the same curiosity that once led you to me, but I ask that you trust I wouldn’t include him unless it was absolutely necessary. And he _is_ necessary.”

I grumbled something vaguely obscene. “Alright.” I stroked his hand, tensing a little. “About Sliske…”

Quen covered my hand with his other, smothering the stroking. “You want to know what exists between us. Why I return to him after everything.” The hand atop mine squeezed. “There will come a time when I’m ready to explain. I can’t yet, but I will. Soon.”

“Alright.” I let the subject drop despite my curiosity. He’d tell me in his own time, and there were other questions. “You said Menaphite language. Is that where he is? Oreb?”

“Almost certainly. He had a fascination with the place and its history, and I do believe he intended to travel there once he’d exhausted the ready supply of test subjects in Edgeville. We head out tomorrow afternoon.” He smiled suddenly. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pack for camp, however. We have plans tonight.”

That caught my attention. “We do?”

“We do.” The smile became lecherous. “You need exercise, old woman.”

I barked an indignant noise and he laughed, leaning in to kiss me again. It was brief and held a great deal of promise.

I narrowed my eyes at him as he broke the kiss, leaning back. “That’s absolutely foul, Quen. Making me wait after that?”

Chuckling, he slid the key into a pocket and crawled off the bed, getting to his feet. “There’s something I have to see to, first. I shouldn’t be too long.” He reached over and rested his hand against the side of my face. “It will be worth the wait.”

The hand drew away and I leaned toward it, licking the back before it was out of reach and offering a grin of my own. “I’ll hold you to it.”

Quen pulled on a shirt and snorted. “You won’t be holding anything with your hands tied behind your back.” He made his way toward the partition again. “Get a bit more sleep. I’ll pack when I return.”

I watched him dip beyond the heavy cloth and smiled.

_I missed you._

 

_………._

 

 _Stooped down and out, you got me beggin' for thread_  
_To sew this hole up that you ripped in my head_ _  
Stupidly think you had it under control_

 

BANKS - “Beggin’ for Thread”

 

Nomad stepped barefoot into the early Pollnivnean morning, careful fingers finding a pocket and ignoring the key in favor of the other capsule given him by Rhyaz. He drew it out and put it in his mouth, rolling it with his tongue until it sat between cheek and teeth. Even without biting through the flexible coating, he swore he could taste a hint of sweetness from its contents. A chocolate-and-fruit sweetness.

_“First one for her. The other for the third of your triad.”_

_“Triad?”_

_“Yes. He plays an unfair game with you two and I intend to see he doesn’t pull all the strings. And be damned careful with these! You don’t know what’s been sacrificed for them. One has suffered unbearably as it is, but she was good enough to through with the process despite that. I will not put her through it again.”_

_“Rhyaz, if this is some scheme of yours-”_

_“-I wouldn’t disturb you at this Zaros-damned hour for a prank, Quen Mahon. Whatever makes its den in Menaphos has ties to you, and the vision alone nearly killed Aris. Almost killed the Oracle, too.”_

_“Very well. Not a prank. What will these do to us?”_

_“Save the two of you, I hope. The Oracle refused to say what she saw, only that the three of you will be in some sort of tangle with that threat and your triad entire will be necessary if Razwan is to defeat it.”_

_“Razwan? If the three of us-”_

_“I can’t explain it all. I barely understand half of it. But the killing blow, whatever form that takes, must be hers. It cannot be you or Sliske.”_

_“I’ll do as you ask.”_

_“Thank you. There is one other message for me to deliver before I go home and reheat these chilled bones by the hearth, Quen, and you must tell her before you face whatever there is to face in that golden city.”_

_“What do I tell her?”_

_“‘Hate is the kindling. Rage is the fire.’ That’s the whole of it. Remind her.”_

_“I don’t understand.”_

_“You don’t have to. She’ll understand when the time comes.”_

Perhaps she would, but the layers of secrecy and ignorance were building rapidly into something Nomad disliked. Prophecy was as often vague to satisfy a huckster’s purpose as it was a consequence of being relayed through human - thus faulty - mediums. He suspected Rhyaz withheld information, too, and she’d asked him not to reveal the capsules’ existence to either Razwan or Sliske.  
  
Sliske he understood. It was terminally foolish to play one’s hand face-up with him.

The rest troubled him, mostly because he preferred certainty over nebulous guesses, but also because he’d begun to appreciate not having to measure anything of himself with someone. Neither he nor Razwan belonged among Saradomin’s glittering throng. They weren’t infatuated with the ideas of heroism or virtue. They were both practical, scarred animals who found something akin to peace in each other’s company. He could lie to her, but it was never thoughtless.

Nomad reminded himself of the business at hand even as something in his midsection sank at what he was about to do. Anticipation and dread shared space in him, oil-coated butterflies beating their wings helplessly as they slid down his insides.

The imprint of the old connection remained despite losing its backbone of wighthood. He focused on it, pulling, seeking the sense of belonging that at once confined and freed him. The infected acceptance that brought him to heel. Shadows crawled, untethering themselves from the realm of simple physics and manifesting anew in the agency of magic. They rose as a Mahjarrat’s silhouette, then peeled away from Sliske and slithered back to their mundane confines.

The Mahjarrat left in their wake reached for Nomad, tracing cheek and then jawline before settling his hand on the back of the other man’s neck. “You don’t know how I revel when that plea comes to me through the shadows. ‘I need you, Sliske,’ it says. Tell me what has you begging in this fading darkness, love.”

Nomad bit the capsule as he stepped in and hooked a finger around the ornate belt on Sliske’s pseudoarmor. He didn’t risk speaking with the almost sickly-sweet fluid in his mouth, instead meeting the hot amber gaze with a silent look.

Sliske made a humming purr of satisfaction and bent to kiss him. First lips met, then tongues, and Nomad shared the second of Rhyaz’s concoctions with his last master. He felt the taller man pause, but Sliske seemed to think little of it, resuming the slow exploration before drawing away and straightening.

Nomad spoke before Sliske could. “Razwan and I are headed to Menaphos tomorrow afternoon.”

Sliske stepped forward, forcing Nomad back until the wall of Ihali’s place pressed behind him, and smiled. “You’d prefer I stay away while the two of you holiday in the lap of luxury? After I’ve already been considerate in leaving the two of you be last night?” He reached to Nomad’s hand at his belt and drew it lower, half-lacing his fingers with Nomad’s own. “And you invite me into a cold morning rather than the comfort of your home, like a lamentable disease that must be quarantined. You’re asking a lot for a man offering nothing in return.”

“What do you want from me?” _I know what you want from me._

Sliske’s free hand went to Nomad’s face, a claw tip tracing the outer arc of his ear. “I’m afraid there’s nothing you can offer that will tempt me away from Menaphos. That you seek to keep me away is reason enough for me to follow and discover your secrets. But,” he pressed Nomad’s hand tighter against himself, “you can buy yourself a day’s reprieve. With a reminder.”

Nomad swallowed. It’d worked, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. “A reminder?”

Shadows again stole away from their corners and recesses, this time shrouding both of them as Sliske pulled them into his own realm. “A demonstration of where you stand with me no matter how tight your grip on Razwan’s leash. Right now. I will leave the two of you to your own devices until tomorrow in exchange, provided my compensation is adequate. And enthusiastic.”

_I expected no less._

Human knelt before Mahjarrat as the darkness encompassed them and bore them to a bitterly familiar plane.

_One day I will be free of this. Someday I will stop wanting this. For now, I will satisfy myself knowing I have, for once, manipulated you the way you’ve so often manipulated me._

“Agreed.”

 

………..

 

_I hate to say it, the more you fuck, the better for your health_

3OH!3 - “Dirty Mind”

 

Movement was made of aches. Warmth was a counteragent to aches. I squirmed closer to Quen, then stopped.

Something pitpatted on small feet atop the blanket covering us. A lot of little somethings.

They were _beeping._

I cracked my eyes open. The blanket was mostly over my head, trapping as much heat as possible in the face of cool Piscatorian air blowing through the tent. It’d been almost too warm once we’d finished what we were doing last night, but that particular kind of heat didn’t linger for long. I regretted not listening to Quen when he’d suggested securing the front flaps closed.

Now something was in here with us, on top of the blanket. Carefully, I curled a finger around the edge and tugged it down to greet our company.

They were everywhere. Lots of them. Too many of them.

Kebbits. Squat, bipedal furballs with strong hind legs holding them upright hopped or waddled across the blanket while large heads - with equally large eyes - swung to and fro. Their little hind ends jerked, too, as half of them went about the business of satisfying themselves with their partners or pitpatting across the soft terrain to find new ones.

“Quen.”

Muffled grumbling answered me.

I whispered again, this time a little more urgently. _“Quen.”_

“Mmmm?” I felt him beginning to shift position.

“Don’t move. Just… look up over the cover. Just… _oh for anima’s sake they’re everywhere.”_

The edge of the blanket pulled and folded as Quen peered overtop. “Kebbits.”

I wormed my arm up and over the blanket, tugging carefully at my pants and trying to dislodge an energetic pair of critters that’d humped themselves halfway into a pocket. “Yes, I _see that._ How the hell do we get rid of them?”

His tone was conversational. “I did tell you they’re empathic.”

“Yeah, that they respond to moods and… wait, this is _our_ fault?”

Quen chuckled. “Yours, actually. I also warned you to tie down the entrance.”

I looked over at him, or what I could see of his face above the blanket’s edge. “You didn’t explain… you didn’t warn… _Quen, we are covered in kebbits._ And they’re trying to make _more kebbits on top of us.”_

“We inspired them.”

_“Quen!”_

He chuckled, reaching for his pants and moving carefully as he put them on. “They’re quite content. I’m afraid we’re going to have to remove them by hand.”

I paused and glared at him. “I am _not_ picking any of them up while they’re… doing that.” I resumed squirming carefully into my own pants and looked back at the fuzzy mass of coitus taking place on our blanket. _“Hsssstsssit! Shoo! Gooreto gom kon, you little fucks!”_

A few of them paused, staring at me. Quen rumbled his amusement. “They respond to mood, not sound.”

The pair nearest me had stopped, too. The one being attended to looked away, but the larger of the two blinked at me as I watched him.

His little butt resumed jerking and he pinned me with a defiant alpha stare.

“Quen?”

“Yes?”

“I think I’m going to have an hysterical episode now.”

“That one reminds me of you a bit.”

I made a strangled sound.

He sighed. “We’ll use the blanket.”

I straightened a finger over the edge of our cover and pointed at Alpha Stare. “I think they beat us to it.”

Quen wriggled out from beneath the blanket and I did likewise. He grabbed a corner and side-stepped along the inside edge of the tent to the other corner on his side, and I realized what he was doing. I grabbed another corner, side-stepping to the last one.

We walked toward each other, slowly lifting and gathering the long edges as we moved, making of the blanket an impromptu carrier. The kebbits’ beeping and trilling went from cheerful to indignant, several of them squeaking their surprise as they tumbled with gravity toward the center.

Quen lifted as I did, and we moved as one out of the tent and around the still-smoldering fire pit to an area just beyond. My arms were beginning to shake from the surprising amount of shifting, complaining weight in our burden. It’d begun to sway with our steps.

“Here?”

He nodded, dropping one corner of the blanket. I did the same, and we pulled the other side across, pouring disgruntled kebbits out onto the ground. Quen began gathering the blanket into a ball and we watched as our visitors responded to their expulsion by righting themselves, shaking as though doused in water, and hop-waddling in search of previous mates or new ones.

They were going back at it. Well, almost all of them.

Rather than join his fellows, the same muddy brown specimen from earlier looked up at me with huge black eyes, challenging.

He _beeped_. Angrily.

I lifted a finger at him, but my mouth quirked in a smile. “I like you. Still, fuck off.”

Alpha Stare chirped and hopped away.

As I’d been dismissed, I turned and trotted to catch up with Quen. “We’re not keeping that. There’s no salvaging it.” I pointed at the blanket balled in his hands. “It must be burned or its existence will haunt me until I die.”

The blanket shook as Quen snickered. “Agreed.”

We burned it in the fire pit. Though he’d been more amused than anything by the morning’s events, I noticed Quen watched it wither and darken with a satisfied expression. The bitter smell of burning fabric made both of us wrinkle our noses, but we stood vigil until nothing recognizable remained of the blanket.

_An acceptable loss._

I followed him back into the tent, this time sealing the front shut against furry intruders. We made do with our bedrolls for covering, overlapping them into one makeshift blanket.

An absurd, still semi-hysterical urge struck me. I _beeped._

Quen propped himself on an elbow and looked down at me. “You can’t be serious.”

I put a little more enthusiasm into another beep, adding a trill to it that better replicated the kebbits’ mating-sounds.

“Don’t… please do not.”

I trilled again, grinning at him.

_“Razwan!”_

 

……….

 

 _This land was green and good_  
_Until the crystal cracked!_  
_Once more, they will replenish themselves_  
_Change and then wait_ _  
The power of their source_

 

The Crystal Method - “Trip Like I Do”

 

Money, runes, changes of clothing. I eyed the pack of tiny, paper-wrapped cigars - a gift from Wahisietel - and added it to the bag, nestling it inside the bundle of a spare shirt. I stood and looked at Quen. “This should be it. There’s a bank in the Merchants’ District if we need anything else.”

He knelt next to the bed, reaching beneath and dragging an unremarkable box toward himself. “Not quite.” He stood with it in his hands and turned to me. “There is one other thing.”

I walked to him and set my bag on the bed. “What’s this?”

He rested the box on a forearm and used his free hand to undo the catches on the front. “A gift. One I’d hoped I would never give, but the need has arisen.”

The second catch fell loose and he lifted the lid. Inside, surrounded by soft fabric, was a clear gem with amorphous white light undulating slowly in its core. It was marginally smaller than the pink one set in Quen’s breastplate, but I recognized the same cut.

He moved the box toward me. “Take it.”

I picked it up, cradling it in my hands and running thumbs over the smoothness on top. “It’s like yours, isn’t it? A magic retention gem.”

“It isn’t a gem.”

I looked from it to Quen. “Crystal, whatever. Why is this one white?”

He shook his head and closed the box, setting it on the floor and toeing it back under the bed. “It isn’t a crystal, or a gem. Not in the sense you mean. It’s a living creature.”

 _“Alive?_ Quen, are…” I felt nauseated. “...damn it, are they hurt when-”

Quen shook his head again. “-No. Not harmed by magic. They act as a focus, keeping spells cohesive despite the presence or touch of metal, but it’s incidental. No more harmful than one of us standing in the rain. We get wet. Magic passes through them and it's unremarkable as far as they're concerned.”

I reached out and tried to hand it to him, but he stepped back with his hands up, palms out in a gesture of negation. “No. You’ve begun the bonding process. To touch it at this early stage would to risk having it align itself to me. It would become useless to you and what I have is adequate to the task of circumventing the metal’s conduction in my armor.”

“Align itself? Themselves?”

“Itself. They are no more sentient than algae. And yes, align.” He tapped his robe where the pink gem lay below it in his breastplate. “They’re from Teragard, as is Charron. He brought them with him when he came here. I was told that his House specialized in them alongside other objects related to magic. Their purpose is twofold: magic retention, and identifying the core emotion with which a person operates. What drives them on a fundamental level.”

I looked down at the gem. The white within it swirled the way the nebulae in Death’s realm did, and I thought I spotted a thread of gray before it disappeared. “So what does white mean?”

“That it is young and unaligned. White is a lack of emotional imprint; as it bonds with you and matures it will change color.” Quen set his bag on the bed and began rifling through its contents. “Some change almost instantaneously, most a few days before the first strings of color can be seen at the core.”

I watched him shuffle his belongings in the bag. “What do yours mean? The pink?”

He smiled faintly. “Mine are an anomaly. Pink isn’t a fully matured color, but I am driven by two disparate things in equal part.”

“What two things?” My fingers spider-crawled over the gem, idly measuring the facets by touch.

The smile disappeared. “Protection is blue. Hatred is red. Since the gem can’t mature with such a duality present, there’s only a bit of each in them. Rather than purple - which signifies something else entirely - the two are blended in only a small amount and white is still present in the mix. Hence the pink.”

I looked down at the gem again. More gray. “Protection and hate. That’s a hell of a mixture.”

“And a hell of an introduction to the nature of oneself. I sought - and still seek - to protect the world. You. Saiman. But I also bear hatred for the world and most in it.”

 _No wonder you’re so fucking moody._ “Charron has these?”

“Red ones. He is a curious man, a learned man, a cultured one, but he is the embodiment of hatred. Is rather proud of it, in fact.”

The gem - my gem - rotated in my hand as I turned it with my fingers. “What do the other colors mean?”

Satisfied with the arrangement in his bag, he drew it shut by the string and turned to me. “I don’t recall all their meanings. Blue and red you know. Yellow is happiness. Orange is… something like verve, I suppose. A passionate devotion to life. Purple is shame.”

I stopped toying with the gem and held it up for him to see. “What does gray mean?”

Quen took two steps forward and stopped just shy of the gem. As he watched, two more tiny rills of gray, darker ones this time, spun around the edges of the little nebula and crawled into the spiral. “Gray means it’s begun its alignment. It isn’t the final color.”

My fingers caged the gem loosely on the underside and I looked up at him, the sudden change in his tone stirring worry in me. “Then what is the final color?”

He looked grim. “Black. Black is your color.”

 _Wonderful._ “If red is hatred, what the hell is black?”

“Rage.” Strangely, some of the grimness left his face and he seemed thoughtful. “Perhaps that’s why.”

“Why what?” I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved Quen no longer looked like I’d been handed a death sentence, or worried by the considering expression that’d replaced it. “Quen, this would be a wonderful time for you to be _informative_ rather than vague and mysterious.”

“‘Hate is the kindling. Rage is the fire.’ Rhyaz asked me to pass that message to you from the Oracle.” He pointed at my robe where a pocket sat inside. “Keep that close to you. The better aligned, the more potent its ability to reduce spell diffusion. You will need armor made for you to fit that, and you are fond of reminding me that Menaphos has, in your own words, ‘everything.’”

I opened my robe and set the gem inside the pocket, wrapping both sides tightly around the thin tank top beneath. With a small grumble, I bent and lifted my bag, settling it over a shoulder and making the sword sheaths at my back clatter against each other. “It does.”

Quen rested a hand on my shoulder, stroking collarbone through the robe. “Razwan.”

“Hmmm?” I was feeling the heat build in the tent and wanted out, but I paused.

“We…” he looked like he was straining something, “...will succeed.”

My itch was forgotten and I laughed. “Quen?”

He raised one dark slash of eyebrow at me. “Yes?”

“That’s the most beautiful speech I’ve ever heard. No ego-driven assurances, no lengthy expositions about how we’ve amassed incredible power and that our enemies should tremble before us? No, ‘give up now, Oreb Charron, before the empire you’ve constructed in your mind has fallen before it has a chance to rise?’ No threatening to eat his soul or-”

He snorted. “-Do you want me to give a speech?”

I laughed again. “Fuck no, and don’t you dare. I’ve heard more of your speeches than I can stand. Let’s go to Menaphos.”

One of his arms wound around my shoulders, and the inside of our home melted into the brilliant white and violet double-helix of his teleport.


	2. Invitation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Menaphos's splendor, Sophanem's secret.

_Buttons are busted, we're decorated_  
_We make an ornament with gold and silver plating_  
_So what's the latest, we raise a fever_ _  
We're just all red inside, that's all to see here_

 

Kaskade Feat. Martina of Dragonette - “Fire In Your New Shoes”

  


Even as far as Menaphos’s Merchant District, the proximity of the Southern Sea cooled the air as Quen and I stepped through the open entrance of Farrokhzad’s Armor and Fine Blades.

Outside, the shop was remarkable in its ordinariness, the surrounding establishments’ bright awnings and metal-inlaid window details contrasting with the bare sandstone of our destination. The shop might’ve been mistaken for a humble residence but for the bleached wood sign above the door, one proclaiming the name of the place in bronze paint framed on all four sides by koftgari-embellished scimitars.

Inside, it was every bit an armory and weapon dealer’s shop. Simple mannequins displayed hauberks and chestplates in steel and dragon leather. A trio of shelves displayed boots and mage’s slippers. Wall hooks bore swords and knives with designs evolved in many different parts of the world - Fremennik weapons whose straightness bespoke the blunt efficiency of their origins, beveled blades familiar to the guards of Varrock, fine rapiers, broadswords, mauls, scimitars, and a small arsenal of shorter swords and knives recognizable most anywhere. More than a few had “blood grooves” - or lengthwise depressions cut into the steel itself - to decrease the weapon’s blade-sided weight without compromising overall strength.

A counter, interrupted in the center by a walk-through, bore long blocks of steel and bundles of hides ready for processing. Larger, thicker hides intended for armor sat in inexpertly-folded lumps next to thinner strips destined to become sword handles or softened into sheath liners. The air was filled with the smell of leatherworking and hot metal, a wooden window fan - magicked to operate on its own - stirring a light breeze.

It was cool inside the shop, and a doorway behind the counter revealed a hall with several more doorways. Irregular orange light pooled on the floor from one, a forge sputtering its complaint and demanding more fuel.

I raised my voice toward the back area, bellowing in Pollnivnean. “Arash Farrokhzad! What self-respecting Ali leaves his tables unattended? Come out here and make a sale before I tell Sharai of your shame!”

“A moment, a moment, sun crawls slow enough west!” Shuffling preceded more proper steps, whose sound in turn preceded an older, whip-thin man into the hallway and out into the shop. Longish black hair lay scattered over his shoulders in curls. He stopped in the middle of the walk-through, putting one long, gnarled hand on the counter while the other tugged absently at his unassuming brown robe.

He looked first at Quen, then at me. “I seem to know that face.” Great caterpillar eyebrows lifted above light brown eyes as he took me in. “Years ago, I often caught some mouse of a Bahir climbing up to my roof and taking her ease up there while her parents searched for her.”

I grinned. “And I seem to recall the man and his wife never giving me away.” I stepped in and hugged the man, receiving one in return that made my ribs whine. “They never let me leave without sweets in my pockets.” I leaned back and eyed him. “You look good. Healthy and happy. Has Menaphos been good to you two?”

He chuckled. “To me, yes. Sharai is still at home.” He paused, glancing at Quen, and switched to broken Kharidian. “Weapons or armor, effendi? Or both? Will be high in price for one so tall!”

Patting him on the arm, I looked back to Quen and spoke again in Pollnivnean. “This is Arash, a good family friend. He makes the best custom armor I’ve ever seen.”

Quen offered me a faint nod, answering in the same language. “I trust your judgment.” He turned his gaze to Arash. “The armor is for her. Something akin to what I wear.”

He untied his robe and allowed it to fall free, revealing the metal-ribbed chestplate, the chain-leather combination beneath, and the mixture of all three in his tassets. He touched the center of his breastplate. “It will need a gem centered as this one is.”

Releasing me, Arash approached Quen and tapped the gem, his tone curious as he reverted to Pollnivnean. “I have nothing like this in stock. It could take some time to find.”

“We have one with us. Only a mechanism to keep it in place is required.” Quen stood patiently while the shorter man approached and examined the rest of his armor with increasing interest.

“Mmhmm, good, well and good, then.” He _ticked_ one of the metal ribs with a fingernail. “This… not steel, no. But solid! A hybrid metal, mmmyes.” He flicked at the chain below it, then plucked at the rest of the materials. “Good, sturdy leather. Hide of a make I don’t recognize. And imbued cloth! Good, excellent, all with just the right overlap. Faultless craftsmanship. I’d almost say you were wearing one of mine, but for the fact that...”

He took a step back and nodded his conclusion at Quen. “...you’re wearing utter nonsense. You spellcast in that and you’ll fry. Pauldron and guard setup are terrible for moving an arm around to shoot a bow. Too heavy. Cloth and leather are sturdy, but if you’re going to go blade for blade, metal’s better protection.” Arash shook his head. “I’m not making another of these sets. I’m absolutely furious _this_ one exists.”

Quen looked ready to snarl. I spoke up. “Arash, just say for a moment you were making armor for a little bit of everything. Some all-around protection, but with stealth in mind. Maneuverable. Adaptable. For the sake of argument, let’s say the metal isn’t a problem for spellcasting.” I pointed at Quen, who’d acquired a rhythmic tic at his temple. “Would what he’s wearing work then?”

Arash’s face grew thoughtful as he assimilated the new parameters. “Perhaps, perhaps. Not bad if there was a way to avoid the metal-magic conduction. Still, if you want to be stealthy, that’s too much weight up top.”

He returned to nudging, prodding, and poking at Quen. “Less plate metal, more chain. More leather, too. Perhaps caps over the shoulders… mmhmmyes, the cage is fine, good, and the hinges are fine designing. I’ll incorporate those.” He lifted Quen’s cape and flipped it behind himself, becoming an irregularly-shaped, forest green lump as he continued his examination.

Quen aimed a glare at me and I shrugged, smiling. “He’s the best there is.” I swallowed back a snort as Arash fiddled with something metallic and a _snick_ preceded the loosening of Quen’s breastplate. The object of the smith’s interest folded his arms in front of himself and looked murderous.

The amorphous cape-lump behind him continued humming and chatting animatedly to itself as much as to us. “The catch isn’t terrible. I can improve upon that, though. Swing-latch here, perhaps? Or no, here! Yes, here. Mmhmm. Belt can stay. Ah, and something of a drape from the waist down back here. Make it harder for someone to aim at the legs from behind!”

Arash stretched an arm out and stepped from beneath the cape, expression satisfied. “I can make something for you, and it will be vastly superior to this.” He gave Quen a dismissive wave. “The look isn’t terrible, but I have something better in mind for you, mmhmmyes. Strike fear in some hearts! Now, where is the gem?”

I withdrew it from the inside pocket of my robe. “It’s here. Don’t touch it with your bare hand, Arash. It’s… not safe.”

“Tell a camel to swing its tail out before taking a shi-” Arash looked back at Quen, who simply raised an eyebrow at him, “I won’t touch it without gloves, of course.” He peered at the gem, then waved it away. “Good enough, you can pocket your treasure. Measurements now, little Bahir!”

He dug into a pocket, withdrawing a long strip of tan leather bearing burn marks at regular intervals, and began issuing orders as he wrapped it around me or held it lengthwise from point to point. “So, how long have you been terrorizing this man, little mouse?”

I narrowed my eyes, but Quen spoke first. “A few years now.” Whatever irritation he’d built during Arash’s examination was gone from his voice, and he sounded amused. “‘Terrorizing’ is quite apt. She’s exhausting. How did you know?”

Arash laughed. “I know the work of a Bahir anywhere. Their victims are either empty of pockets or worn to the bone by the end, and you look weatherbeaten and worn from more than sand, right enough!”

I gritted my teeth while Quen shared in the laugh. “Not entirely of her doing. She owns part of it, but not all.”

A slew of unkind retorts occurred to me, but any snappishness on my part would only contribute to their narrative. I stewed in revenge-plotting silence as Arash went on. “Mine’s the same way. Not a Bahir, but she’ll put gray on the hair before it runs away in fear. Sharai is a cactus, too. Prickles and pain!”

Quen smiled, reaching behind himself and relatching his chestplate beneath his cape. “Found your peace in Menaphos?” He plucked his robe up off the floor and redonned it.

“Hah! I wish it were that easy. No, she still visits, and I still go home now and again.” Arash moved behind me and stretched the leather taut from my shoulder to the wrist. “Like bad-tempered camels, some women. Mostly they bite and spit, but sometimes - with sweet words and a bit of patience - they let you get on and ride, mmhmm.”

I glared at Quen and he grinned back, smug. “It’s not a bad ride, considering.”

Arash brayed laughter at my back. “Perhaps if you like a rough ride that leaves you sore in the morning!”

Quen scoffed good-naturedly. “Or if you know how to hold the reins. Sometimes it’s smooth for you and rough for them.” He winked at me.

I growled at him. _I never promised to stop trying to kill you, Quen Mahon._

He refused to wither under my stare. “In fact, with the right hand, even the most ornery camels can be persuaded to submit and behave themselves.”

I opened my mouth to let fly a proper snarl and a torrent of angry words, then stopped, shock leaving it open.

 _He’s talking about_ that _with a man who used to coax me off his roof with sweets… about…_

Arash stepped away, laughter still threatening between words. “If you say so. Four days I’ll need for this. Bring the gem to fix in place properly then, and you’ll have your armor. Did you need more than that? New blades for either of you?”

Quen shook his head. “That will do, thank you.” He lifted a hand and beckoned to me. “We’ll see you in four days.”

Rolling the measuring leather into loops around a hand, Arash aimed a conspiratorial smile at Quen. “You two should make good use of the time. Menaphos is a pretty place if you can stand all the gilding. Lots of long, winding paths, good for riding.”

I turned and sighed, welcoming another hug from Arash and squeezing a bit harder than I had last time. _“Thank you,_ Arash. I’m sure we’ll find our own way around.”

He chuckled and patted my back. “Don’t take me to heart, little Bahir.” He held my shoulders and stepped back. “Men speak such among themselves, and it grants us neither wisdom nor betterment. An exercise in foolishness to make us better fools.”

“Hmph. Tell _him_ that.” I jerked a thumb back toward Quen. “I’ve never met anyone who thought more highly of himself.”

Arash laughed and waved us off, the hem of his robe hissing over sandstone. “Go on, both of you. Go be fools together. That is the finer part of foolishness.”

He retreated into the back area and through a doorway. I joined Quen and we stepped back out into sunshine and heat, wincing until our eyes adjusted.

“Quen?”

“Hmmm?”

“I’m not a camel.”

He nodded, face solemn. “True. I’ve never had a camel give me as much trouble as you do.”

“Fuck off. If anything, _you_ terrorized _me.”_

“I didn’t exactly build my soul obelisk in your bathroom. You welcomed yourself to my tent and the lair beneath it without so much as a ‘hello’ by way of introduction.” He still looked amused, but there was an undercurrent of wariness about his face.

“You were… _eating souls!_ Or absorbing them. Whatever.” I lifted my hands and made a box-moving gesture in frustration. “Zamorak was trying to recruit from people fighting on his side and he couldn’t exactly do that with you using candidates for snacks. Enter yours truly.” My hands fell to my sides and I turned to look at him. “Sorry if I didn’t observe the proper meeting-a-soul-eating-lunatic protocol.”

The smile left his face, but the deadpan expression that replaced it was no less mirth-tinged. “I suppose that, in retrospect, attempting to kill me didn’t fall outside reason. And you did make up for it when next we met.”

I snorted. “‘Made up for it.’ Are you trying to say the sex was fair exchange for attempted murder?”

Shoppers and merchants alike milled around us, one or two sparing interested glances. A girl of perhaps thirteen or fourteen blinked at me, slack-jawed, before an older woman gripped her arm and dragged her away with sour disapproval written on her face.

Quen shrugged. “You’re better at that than you are at killing me.”

I laughed. “Fuck you.”

He nodded. “Your threats have also improved since we first met.”

“You consider that a threat?”

“Only when you say it.” He started walking and I kept pace as he went on. “There are worse threats.”

Those within earshot of us gave us a wide berth. I ignored them. “Fair enough. Library next?”

An arm wound around me as we made our way between stalls and shops toward the center of the city. “Library next.” He paused. “Unless you’d prefer to go riding.”

I grinned and wormed my arm beneath his cape. “Why ‘unless?’”

Quen grumbled something in a slightly distressed tone as we made our way out of the Merchant’s District.

  


……….

 

 _You know what I want when the ice cubes sliding and the honey sticking and my lips are burning_  
_You know what I want when it's all about kicking_  
_When you're ready to go, yeah are you ready to go?_

Elektrisk Gønner - “Uknowwhatiwant”

  


Water running in the fountain echoed throughout the library, the sound as clear on the sub-level where the feature sat as it was on the top floor, its sound falling short of loud no matter where one stood. The walls were covered in bookshelves laden with tomes, broken only by larger square shelves split into triangles with wooden X-shaped inserts. Bound scrolls sat stacked like wine bottles in these, four or five nestled in each of the triangular spaces, tassels and ribbons hanging out of a few in what was either carefully-chosen or serendipitous artfulness.

The “floors” themselves lined the walls with railings facing the open centers, each lower floor staging inward like an inverted pyramid. Two guards stationed on either side watched over the entire library with little infringing on their lines of sight save for the bottom floor, where the walkway of the level above obscured the view of the shelves from the guards’ positions.

Quen and I stood between the wall and a bookshelf several feet away on the bottom floor. We’d been here for well over an hour, scanning spines for titles or suggestions of anything that might be useful to us. Old geographical information. The highlights of the city itself. What might be of interest to an impossibly old Teragardian with his sights set on power accumulation.

It was beginning to look like a fruitless endeavor. Even Quen had begun shuffling impatiently, less interested in the books and more interested in brushing my shoulder as he reached toward the shelf, tracing worn leather spines with one long finger. I’d begun losing interest in the spines’ offerings in favor of that finger, or the feeling of his robe against my back when he stood close enough. I couldn’t recall the last dozen books we’d checked by title or color if pressed.

Breath stirred the hair near my ear that hadn’t stayed wound into the braid. “Put your hands on the shelf just above you.”

I reached up, fingers atop the sanded-smooth wood with thumb hooked beneath. A thrill of curious anticipation travelled over my skin. “I thought we were doing research?”

A hand fiddled with the tie over my robe and pulled it free, delving beneath and smoothing over my abdomen. Quen’s voice tickled my ear again. “You’re in no mood to research.” A boot tapped the inside of one of mine and I slid it farther away from the other. “You’ve been watching my fingers as though they’re the answer to everything you’ve ever wanted to know.”

I swallowed, feeling his hand slide lower and into my pants. “You know we’re going to get thrown out of here, right? Not complaining, just pointing it out.”

“Not if you’re quiet.”

His other hand went over my mouth, thumb resting against the side of my nose. The first pressed me back against him as it delved lower. He’d had to’ve inclined his head, and his voice was a controlled fall of granite in my ear, the whisper carrying every bit of his smug surety. “Hands stay on the shelf, or I stop.”

Fingers explored, worked, stroked, and though whatever curses and pleading I uttered were reduced to muffled whining by his palm, my hands stayed where they were. My breaths grew short and desperate, each inhale bringing with it the good, clean scent of old books and each exhale an increasingly animalistic whine. It sounded like stifled crying to my own ears.

[Let me. Let me turn around. There’s a shelf or the floor-]

[No.]

It was the right answer. Muscles in my legs tensed and I pushed against the hand, fingernails scraping the wood of the shelf, and the scream I let loose was rendered little more than a high-pitched whine. The palm over my mouth was warmed by that scream and I shut my eyes, riding out the waves of pleasure accompanying the pulsing, rhythmic contraction within.

The feeling abated slowly and I let the shelf go. One hand went to the forearm of the hand over my mouth, stroking over the sleeve in a silent gesture. The other found the hand responsible for my release and pressed against it through the fabric of my pants. I rested against him, legs unsteady, and Quen remained as he was until I shuffled my feet to stand properly. The hand in my pants withdrew, and the one over my mouth fell away once I’d grown silent.

I turned to him, curling fingers into the front of his robe. [My turn.]

He chuckled out loud, but continued to speak through the soul connection. [Later. You were sending images through this link, distracting me, and I had limited options. It was either that or conclude our research early, and we only have a few days for seeking out advantages.]

[Let me return the favor. Research can wait a little longer.]

[You will return the favor. Tonight. First, we should make a discreet exit and find something to eat.]

At some point he’d redonned his gloves, and I tried in vain to recall when he’d had the opportunity. I tied my robe back in place and we ascended the stairs to the top level in silence.

As we made our way to the door, Quen nodded to the guard. The guard nodded in return, eyebrows knitting together over a squint as we passed, seeming to realize something was amiss but hesitant to air his suspicion. We moved into the entryway, and from there out into the early evening sunlight.

And to a dark new addition to the architecture of Menaphos.

  


………

 

 _There's an awful world inside of me_  
_You wouldn't believe all the things I've seen_  
_Who should I be? The sounds stifle me_ _  
To feed in fear, try penetration here_

 

Timo Mass Feat. Kelis - “Help Me”

  


It stood perhaps thirty paces away, a monolith erupted from the ground and pointing its accusation at the sky like a single, sooty finger. Fractures marred its surface, cracks permitting lurid violet light into the open, a color that brought to mind magical infection or corruption proclaiming itself loudly despite the sunlight that should’ve swallowed it. Several smaller replicants hovered around it, equidistant from each other like an alert and well-trained guard detail.

The obelisk sat in insult to the light and beauty of its surroundings, antithetical to the very notion of either. Though light did reflect from the dark stone, it didn’t reflect _enough,_ as though the monstrosity stole a bit for itself and hoarded it in some unknown dimension while grudgingly reflecting the excess.

It looked _wrong._ A piece of malevolent temple first constructed on an alien world, then forced rudely into another with no invitation. It intruded upon this world with no subtlety. An invader. I felt something bitter stir at the sight of it.

I hated it. Whatever it was, I wanted - _needed_ \- it gone. Instinct railed and screamed at it from inside my head. _Expunge it from the skin of the world. Infected. Dig and scrape and sterilize the wound when it’s removed. Will never accept it never coexist with it must end its disease must stop it-_

Beneath even instinct, in some primordial sliver of my mind, a second voice. Quieter, but no less adamant. _Touch it. Brush your face against it. Welcome it. Embrace it accept it revel in the contamination you are two of a kind-_

“RAZWAN!”

I stopped, jerked back to reality by Quen’s voice. My own sounded low and foreign to my ears. “Help me kill it.”

“It’s a soul obelisk.” His hand went to my upper arm and held it too tightly.

“No. Yes.” I shuddered despite the heat outside, and I felt myself baring teeth at the insult before us. “No. It has to die, Quen. It has to go. _Now.”_

“Going to it would be foolish… _Razwan, no!”_

I’d jerked and slipped away, making a dash for the error, the _wrong-thing_ that both threatened and promised poison. I heard Quen speed up behind me and poured more into my sprint, feeling him close on my heels.

Not close enough. Fingers slipped over the back of my robe as my hand met the stone. There was something oily on its surface, the sickly-sweet smell of rotting garbage made tactile sensation. Wet sugar and corpse slime.

[Shuvoussi eteren whorefilth guardian revulsion but power yes sseidi power an end to this]

The mental voice was wrong. Not Quen’s, although the connection through which it traveled was the same. It was gel-saturated cloth dragged over ragged stone, unctuous, and - despite the nonsense syllables peppering the stream of words - _lucid._

I’d thought I’d known hate when I’d first spied the obelisk. I knew nothing. The phantom second presence was saturated in hatred, or formed of it, tinted with greed and cold intelligence, but it was hatred given a telepathic voice. An avatar of hate speaking to me in curdled tones.

[Rhevssou you come to me alhassi I welcome it welcome all you have your strangeness your befoulment your ahissha purified an end to imprisonment]

“Take your hand off it, Razwan.”

I shook my head. “Can’t. Quen something… it talks and it’s evil and I have to kill it.”

A pale hand slapped the stone next to mine, and the voice became piercingly loud in my skull with a sickening mixture of eagerness and loathing.

[TWO BOTH YES NO ARDISSI MAHJARRAT A FILAMENT OF MAHJARRAT SHVOUSSI I WILL HAVE IT HAVE ALL COME AND DETHRONE ME YOU ARROGANT FILTH UNWORTHY COME AND UNDO PAIN AHARSSU PAIN]  
  
The slick stone beneath my palm thrummed as though the incorporeal voice vibrated through it, intensity mounting.

[COME TO ME THEN, ARROGANCE. GUARDIAN. PUPIL. MAHJARRAT FILAMENT. THE CHALLENGE IS ISSUED AND PURIFICATION, CLEANSING THE PUTREFACTION YES I WILL HAVE BOTH ALL THREE BRING YOURSELVES LET GO THE TORMENT THE SHAHVADI THE PAIN]

The voice rose in pitch as the frequency increased, and my hand began to feel disconnected. Though I couldn’t take my eyes away from the stone, my peripheral vision caught Quen bowing his head in effort next to me.

The words became not-words, screaming. It ground into my head, my face, my eyes.

_No. You die. I don’t die here, not to you. I will force you out and you will break. Break, damn you, stop existing, stop being, stop occupying space in this world. It will not have you and I will not stand for you._

Something warm trickled from my nose. The screaming was too high, too uniform, inhuman.

The obelisk shattered beneath our hands, erased in a wash of pink and tan dust that rained down to the sandstone. Its smaller counterparts turned pale and burst into secondary clouds that fell in the larger one’s wake.

The loss of it was too sudden and I pitched forward, landing on hands and knees in the innocuous dust left behind, and I coughed. Blood speckled the sand in front of my face and was absorbed, forming dark, grainy beads that stared blindly up at me like eyes.

An arm gathered me from the ground and lifted uncomfortably until I leaned against Quen. I swiped tiredly at my face and spoke through cords that felt coated in their own sand. “Oreb.”

“Oreb.” Quen sounded as tired as I felt. “He knows we’re here. We’re losing what few advantages we have.”

The arm around me adjusted itself for better support and I walked carefully with its owner toward the center of the city. People peeked out at us from windows and around door frames. We paid them no mind.

“Quen?”

“Rest. Don’t try to talk now. I’ll do what I can to heal the damage when we’re back at the inn.”

I ignored him. “Tell me again. That we’ll succeed.”

He was quiet as we descended the steps leading away from the Imperial District and into the evening shade.

  


……….

 

 _Well, I'm not paralyzed_  
_But, I seem to be struck by you_  
_I wanna make you move_ _  
Because you're standing still_

 

Finger Eleven - “Paralyzer”

  


Healed, rested, and wearing my new armor, I walked with Quen between stalls in the Merchant’s District, trying to be surreptitious in my search for mirrors and failing.

“Your armor meets with your approval.” Quen’s voice was certain, and carried satisfaction.

I abandoned the casual air and stood in front of a lengthwise mirror, splaying fingers where Arash had carefully inserted the gem before bracketing it in place with metal. “It feels strange, but good. Comfortable. Just... new.”

The man who’d once suffered my childhood territorial claim to his roof had delivered admirably. Dark brown leather caps on the shoulders and over the chest matched the arm guards and fingerless leather gloves. Imbued black cloth comprised pants and everything in the top that wasn’t leather or part of the chest cage, including a half-cape that draped behind me from waist to ground. Below the chest, metal of a soft grayish gold color had been formed into a spider-like configuration, the strips of metal mimicking the lay of my ribs up and around to the back. It looked like Quen’s but differed in several ways - the strips and front brace were thinner, the hinges spaced closer together, the whole of the thing graceful where his looked hardy.

It moved with me. I’d taken a few practice tumbles to be sure, and the getup did nothing to infringe on my movement. Same for a few winding kicks and practice spins of my swords.

My retention gem had continued to mature at a brisk pace while we waited for the armor, and sat centered just below the chest, black toward the outside with a gray nebula swirling and darkening in the center. I’d cast a few practice blood spells at crocodiles just outside Menaphos’s gates, and the spells neither wounded me nor dispersed through the metal. I might’ve been wearing a mage's robes.

All in all, it was magnificent work, and it looked… fearsome. The drape behind me felt impractical despite my knowing its purpose, and I’d caught Quen staring several times during my hunt for reflective surfaces.

I smiled at the mirror. “The new armor meets with your approval.”

Quen inhaled to speak and I looked at him. He froze, turning his luminous blue gaze upward. “It would appear our grace period has elapsed regardless of my approval.”

I followed his gaze and watched as a raven wheeled down to us, landing several feet away. It squawked, hopping forward, looking stern and impatient.

Its beaked opened again, but what issued forth chilled my blood. “Sshvoussi ahssi tka?”

Quen responded as I stared at it. “Anhassi dkha oorish.”

The raven clacked its satisfaction, opening wings and pumping them to gain air. Its shadow roiled over the sandstone as it rose, and I felt Quen’s hand at my back.

He sounded grim. “This is your last opportunity. Do you have what you need?”

I nodded. “Everything. Oreb isn’t going to know what hit him. I hope…” I felt the snarl returning, “I hope he suffers. If I can make him suffer for… for that _thing_ he erected…”

We walked, following the anjuman as it wheeled slowly east. Quen navigated us around clusters of people to the wide gate as he spoke. “You will be as efficient as possible. Do _not_ underestimate him. I don’t know that even the three of us will be adequate to the task. You can indulge yourself by kicking his corpse after the fact.”

Guards nodded and stepped aside, allowing us passage through the gates leading to Sophanem. Our guide still urged us east, then south as we passed the second set of imposing, gilded gates into Menaphos’s sister city.

Menaphos was a study in finery. Sophanem was one of simplicity, the architecture rectangular, mud-brown or sand-speckled tan, a city of hardship that had endured plagues atop plagues. There was no gilding, no polished marble, only simple structures built from the most easily accessible materials, what few awnings in existence undyed and uninteresting. It wasn’t ugly, but after the elegance and opulence, it was a stark palate cleanser.

The pyramid to which we were led was equally bland, a brown and squat thing guarded by a single man in beaten bronze armor. The guard made as if to stop us, but retracted into bored disinterest when Quen held up the key for his inspection.

Our anjuman guide squawked once, a sound both malevolent and cheerful, and departed. We entered the pyramid.

There was little light inside, and our path descended swiftly from the limited sun offered by the entryway into an unhealthy green gloom that seemed to permeate the very walls around us. We could see our way forward, but there was no readily identifiable light source, the melancholy glow omnipresent but refusing to hint at its origin.

Sounds issued from doorways to our right and left, growls and whines, grunts and insectile clattering. Occasionally, I caught a glimpse of animals whose forms were distinct from their surroundings only by dint of unhealthy green luminescence swirling through fur, over chitinous exoskeletons, along skin covering smoothly-defined muscles. None of the beasts seemed interested in our passage, and we traveled belowground unassailed.  
  
The corridor leveled off to a wide slate platform, descending again between two sets of ancient and rusted iron railings. The hisses, clicking, and growls behind us grew quieter, and a voice as sinister as the corrupted creatures' sounds reached us, coming from everywhere and nowhere.

The voice was bass-tinged, cultured, loud, and spoke with a kind of malevolent magnanimity through sound as much as telepathy.  
  
[I SEE MY EMISSARY HAS FULFILLED HIS PURPOSE. WELCOME, RAZWAN BAHIR, WORLD GUARDIAN AND ARCANA FERRUM OF ZAMORAK. WELCOME, QUEN MAHON, MY BETRAYER, MY FAILED HEIR. WELCOME, TOO, SLISKE. IT HAS BEEN TOO LONG.]  
  
A bone-saturating growl echoed throughout the chamber, silencing the creatures behind us, coming not from the booming presence ahead but from somewhere nearby.

Though the shadows available were few, darkness became animate and gathered itself before falling away and leaving Sliske next to us. He neither looked to us nor spoke to us, his face empty of playfulness, and he sounded almost… angry. He hailed the voice in return. “You overstep your ability, old man. I see time hasn’t afforded you any lessons in caution.”

The bass-tinged chuckle issued again. [MARVELOUS, SHADOWLING, MARVELOUS. I ADMIRE BRAVERY INSOFAR AS ITS PURPOSE DOESN'T CONFLICT WITH MINE.]

Sliske fell silent next to us. The disembodied voice went on.

[FURIOUS LITTLE SOUL, RAZWAN BAHIR OF ZAMORAK. DO YOU KNOW HOW IT BURNS? I WONDER IF MY FORMER APPRENTICE HAS DEIGNED TO SHARE THAT WITH YOU, IF HE APPRECIATES THE VOLATILE BEAUTY OF IT. YOU MAY REST ASSURED THAT I DO.]

We stood together, silent, tense.

[MY OLD APPRENTICE. THE MAHJARRAT WHO WAS ONCE MY TUTELARY IN THIS WORLD. THE VERY KEY TO MY OWN LIBERTY. COME, ALL THREE OF YOU. BE WELCOME IN THE CROSSING.]

We followed the gentle decline of the path to another slate platform, one bisected by a river with a short bridge leading beyond. We crossed it in silence, mist mostly obscuring the water below, the occasional lapping against the stone and slow movement of something large and aquatic the only signs of what lay below.

The bridge ended in a final open area marked by wide flagstones, the wall before us interrupted by a pair of impossibly large doors. One sat ajar, permitting a shaft of low light to paint the stone in front of us with a sickly gray stripe. A keyhole, rimmed in gold, sat recessed in the doorframe to the right.

Quen approached the frame, and a new telepathic voice - this one contemplative and with a cool, metallic flavor to the mental tone - addressed us.

[Do you seek an audience with the Guardian of the Crossing?]

I spoke aloud, looking around for the source of the new voice and seeing nothing. “Yeah, my foot seeks an audience with the Crossing Guard's-”

Quen overrode me. [We seek an audience, yes.]

The voice acknowledged him. [The Keyholder is recognized. You are expected. I am the Barrier, and I permit passage for you three.]

A sound not dissimilar to one of Oldak's machines thrummed, and the light quality just beyond the door changed as a milky energy ward collapsed.

We entered through the doorway and were met by a wide stone chamber. It was largely empty save a humble and heavily-laden bookshelf against the wall to the left, and a monolithic structure centered against another wall on the far side. Two vivid, violet barriers impeded access to something beyond, its details rendered indistinct by wavering energy. The room was otherwise deserted.

I strode to the monolith, feeling the residue of _wrongness_ slide under my skin as I approached. Longer strides followed me, and I reached out to the surface of the stone, laying my palm flat against it. It was oily as the other one was, and I fought the desire to recoil with gritted teeth.

An erubescent glow shot from the bottom of the obelisk and along the floor to somewhere behind us. We turned, following its path, and I watched as the red energy traced the outline of a man. The lines grew brighter, almost blinding, before fading to reveal Charron.  
  
He stood proudly, feet planted wide. His armor was almost decadent compared to Nomad's, but the heritage of the latter was evident in the former - a combination of fabric, chain, and hard metal inlaid with various magic retention gems. Charron’s were hotly red where Nomad's were violet, the metal a tarnished-looking silver while Nomad's was brighter and polished, arm guards and gloves sputtering with yet more red energy, yet there was still a sense of the familiar.

His staff, detailed and molded, was capped with an irregularly-cut gem matching those on his armor. It pulsed with infected light. His eyes, brown, still exuded the telltale blue glow of soul consumption.

No longer booming or filtering through telepathic means, his voice was silken bass. Extraordinarily beautiful. And empty.

“Welcome to the Crossing.”

 

                                                [wingbeats]


	3. Adaptation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, the more things change, the more they just... change.

_No one's going to take me alive_  
_Time has come to make things right_  
_You and I must fight for our rights_ _  
You and I must fight to survive_

 

Muse - “Knights of Cydonia”

 

 _I’ve never started a proper journal until today. Kept notes handy while mired in some adventuring business, and I maintain a field ledger for training Zamorak’s assassins so my students’ progress is represented in a measurable way, but it was never a habit to put my thoughts to paper. Now I sit in Akthanakos’s tent, still shuddering and half-drained from our most recent session, doing precisely that._  
_  
Akthanakos. I’m grateful for him. He’s too good a friend and more than I deserve._

_Maybe I inherited this predisposition alongside everything else. Probably did. The words flow freely and naturally, and they feel like... mine, in a way, but I know I’ve never spoken like this. Or thought like this. Introspection has always been limited to infrequent, unpracticed stabbing at my internal workings, short-lived and followed up with a generous measure of liquor, but now I’m looking long into myself as though the habit was deeply ingrained._

_I’m exhausted. I feel strange, even when I’m not distributing my awareness between this body and others with Akthanakos’s guidance. None of us are we were before we descended into that pyramid and met the Crossing’s problematic inhabitant. I’m arguably the most changed, but all of us have metamorphosed, caterpillars emerging from chrysalises with frayed - if vividly patterned - wings._

_What are we now? Three entirely new beings._

_I don’t know what that means for the fate of the world. We’ve avoided catastrophe, certainly. Charron’s plans were lunacy; both life and afterlife stood to lose in his proposition, but whether or not having averted what he’d set in motion is worth the cost?_

_That’s up for debate._

_Right, right, new journal. I should probably introduce myself in case this thing ever falls into curious hands._

_My name is Razwan Bahir, and I’m not the World Guardian._

_...and I am in hell._

 

         [wingbeats]

 

“Welcome to the Crossing.”

His armor was striking. So, too, was his staff. The ruff of feathers around his collar, the ruby energy that hissed and sputtered in his armor, and the soul magic miasma that bled from his eyes the way smoke drifted from a pipe all suggested someone formidable. Powerful.

The man, however, looked human. Mortal. Divested of his trappings, he wouldn’t have drawn attention anywhere he went, save perhaps Rellekka. Less the eyes and the cruel, disgusted twist to his features, he could’ve been someone’s grandfather.

Just a man.

Sliske’s tone suggested otherwise. “I don’t typically set stock in regret, but you are a shameful display. To think I’d once tried to cultivate your tastes for the better and the broader, yet still you limit yourself to trinkets and pedestrian attempts at grandeur.”

Charron sneered. “To think I’d expected better than three fools spoiling for a physical altercation.” His gloved fingers crawled and found a new grip on the staff. He spared me a glance. “Swords. _Bestial._ As base as I’ve known two of you to be.”

Quen’s voice was neutral. “No more base than hatred for hatred’s sake, κύριος. Or do you prefer bēlu these days?”

Charron’s cheek twitched at the word. “You have no call to speak that way to me. I don’t recognize you.”

I looked up at Quen, confused. “Wasn’t he-”

Quen nodded. “‘Was’ being the operative word. He knows who I am; it means he doesn’t acknowledge me as his onetime pupil.”

As he spoke, there were no obvious changes in his expression. No lowering of eyes, no loss of tension in his posture.

Just a slight press of lips into a thinner line. I’d have missed it had puzzlement not kept my attention on him.

I’d hurled every abuse I could think of at him at one time or another. Called him a bare footprint in camel shit, a son of a bitch, the slime scraped from the edges of Duzakh’s well. He’d borne it all with varying degrees of irritation or in patience, but never with any outward sign of being wounded. Stoic or amused, but never a tiny, almost imperceptible change that spoke volumes into the silence.

I returned my attention to Charron and snarled. “I don’t know you from a wet stream of buzzard shit. Suits me just fucking fine.”

It didn’t seem possible, but Charron looked more disgusted as he struggled for words. “You… _revolting…”_

His halting reaction gave me a moment to appreciate the absurdity of him. I’d seen teleportation; his erubescent-energied entrance hadn’t been overwhelming after having seen a man materialize from shadow itself. The ruff of feathers and armor weren’t as impressive as first glance suggested, but excessive. Long hours spent gaze-locked with luminous blue eyes had immunized me from the curiosity of Charron’s. Less the voice - that bereftness in it - he was unremarkable.

Quen and Sliske exuded tension next to me. I felt it, absorbed a little of it, but my mind refused to associate the feeling with the man before us.

There was the voice, however. I knew it from the obelisk in Menaphos. It lacked the sibilant nonsense words and the telepathic potency, but there was something as sleek and alien about it as the structure that’d jutted vulgarly into the Imperial District.

Charron sounded as viscerally repulsed as I felt. “...nevermind. Your natures won’t tarnish the raw material. Whatever taint you’ve lent to those energies will be purged in the circuit.”

Quen stiffened. “No. You _haven’t-”_

“-I have.” Charron’s smile was no more appealing than his snarl. “And you simpletons arrive here with _weaponry.”_

He canted his staff forward and hissed something in that language I’d first heard from the obelisk.

A stream of unhealthy violet light pulsed into being, intersecting all four of us and forming an irregular quadrilateral shape.

It _pulled._

The four of us screamed as one.

 

         [wingbeats]

 

_That isn’t to say I haven’t begun the slow climb out of hell. Sometimes I laugh, and there isn’t gratitude enough in the world for Akthanakos’s discovering ways to make that happen. I’ve made no secret of the fact that he’s been my lifeline while everything else falls apart, and he remains. He’s never balked at the… the difficulty that I represent._

_I don’t know why he hasn’t balked. I can’t divine a reason for his staying. I’ve cried for hours, raved, tried to sneak away in the stillest hours of night and leap from the edge of the cliff before he finds me and carries me back to his tent. I’ve fought him. Cursed at him. Begged him to kill me, or to let me accomplish the deed myself._

_Broke one of his candles in a fit of rage, too, and yet Akthanakos has never lifted a hand against me. Never tried to subdue my outbursts with offerings of alcohol or other mind-altering substances._

_He refuses when I ask for them. “You have to face this clearheaded, or you’re not facing it at all. You can’t move forward if you don’t face it.”_

_He’s right. Before Charron, though, I would’ve fought hard for a bottle of rum. The once-encompassing drive to drink is diminished._

_A small favor lending itself to the biggest of them all._

_He holds me while I weep and let forth the torrent of self-hatred, the loathing I feel for this new thing I’ve become. He listens patiently no matter how often I repeat myself. He’s sat in vigil over me while I lay on a bedroll after long hours of piloting practice, holding my hand as I sleep. The hand is still there when I wake up. He asks for nothing, makes no hints at intimacy, offers no complaints._

_He is the friend I've always needed. Too perfect, maybe. There are times I wonder if I've crafted an illusion for myself out of desperation._

_I saw him recoil only once, when I first spoke coherently to him in the words of this new being. Only once, and never since._

_I don’t hold it against him, illusion or no. I’d recoiled at myself._

_Not that doing so was entirely new to me, but we been alone in our reaction._

_Sliske had recoiled, too._

 

         [wingbeats]

 

I’d known pain before. Not quite like this, but familiar enough. Siphoning. Pulling from me and travelling through the violet light to Sliske, to Quen, to Charron, then returned to me tinctured with the foreign. There’d been no return when Sliske had stolen a piece of my soul and fed it into Quen’s, but this was similar. Every last fiber of my body swore an oath it was being split in twain.

_Fuck-anima it hurts fucking stop it HURTS-_

I would’ve collapsed had I been able. Whatever it was, the energy coursing perpetually through the four of us kept us upright. It sizzled, simultaneously infusing and depleting along its path. Quen and Sliske were both bowed forward, Charron and I held at points of intersection too high to allow for it.

The beam, whatever it was, depleted more than it returned. Our souls were being bled out.

Despite that, Charron looked dismayed through the strain. Tendons stood rigid in his neck, lips peeled back from his teeth in a grimace, but his eyes were wide and darting between the three of us like a trapped animal only just beginning to comprehend the dimensions of its cage.

Quen, growling, answered the look. “You can’t take three of us. You’ll overload. Didn’t…” he hissed through the pain, “...didn’t plan well enough, bēlu.”

Through the buzzing, I watched as a small, fragile strand of green crawled from Quen into the circuit. It was slow, but where it advanced I saw the beam stutter, a vine slowly choking the violet conduit between the two of them.

Another was choking the stream between Quen and Sliske.

I knew that green. It’d been the color that’d consumed my field of vision as Guthix expended himself to imbue me with his unwelcome purpose.

He had it, too. Sliske had…

_Sliske._

Was bound in Charron’s soul snare.

_What soul? He’s a Mahjarrat?_

Quen wasn’t alone in exuding tendrils of it into the energy. Another pair, these fighting the current back to Charron and another tensing to extinguish the beam between myself and Sliske, emerged from me.

A third pair, these thinner but bearing no less of the mark of Guthix’s gift, emerged from Sliske himself.

Wound their way around the flickering, fizzling remnants of the beam reaching him.

And _cinched._

Quen and I yelled in tandem, panicked. _“MOVE, SLISKE!”_

Sliske backed away, unprepared for the cessation of the circuit’s hold, and fell to the stones on the floor. He looked almost as he had in his own chamber after we’d fought, half-reclined on a forearm and breathing raggedly.

The violet energy reformed into a triangle. Charron gritted his teeth in frustration, turning his panting into spittle-peppered hissing.

Our tendrils, mine and Quen’s, withdrew back into us and reemerged, both aimed at Charron.

Quen’s voice came through the soul connection. [The final blow must be yours, Razwan. Hate is the kindling, rage is the fire. Remember!]  
  
The beam fizzled again, not quite severed but nearly so. It was enough, and Quen forced himself backward as the circuit snapped and reformed between Charron and myself.

Quen knelt, nearly falling, but caught himself and stood.

My tendrils retracted once more, then began weaving themselves anew, green against putrid violet.

They stopped.

Charron’s rictus became more sickly with a grin. “You’re not enough on your own, little girl. They can’t touch us for fear of reintroducing themselves to the circuit, or breaking it and overloading us both.”

My vines - Guthix’s gift - began to wither at the ends. They were retreating under the barrage of soul energy now concentrated entirely on me. It was too much.

I was losing.

 

         [wingbeats]

 

_Sliske._

_He’d sacrificed for me._

_Akthanakos tells me my memory of Sliske’s bringing me here is real. That his parting words were real._

_He tells me that Sliske’s other visits aren’t real. That my questions to him are aimed at the side of the tent, or directed toward the horizon when I sit outside. Akthanakos tells me he’s kept careful watch and hasn’t interfered when I -_

_\- when I hallucinate, he says._

_What has he heard? I don’t remember the conversations, only Sliske sitting with me. I know we speak. I know we do, but the words have evaporated, and I can’t draw them back to cohesion no matter how precisely I recall that liquid, mocking, mellifluous voice. No attempt to mentally immerse myself in it has drawn out what was said. Sensory association isn’t working._

_Akthanakos seems certain that coming to terms with Sliske leaving, and with what the imprint did, will put an end to the hallucinatory episodes._

_I don’t want them to be hallucinatory. I want him here. I want to ask him why._

_And I so desperately want proof that the imprint didn’t take._

_I can handle not being the World Guardian anymore. I hadn’t wanted it in the first place._

_I can’t lose Sliske._

 

         [wingbeats]

 

_“Look at them, Oreb. People. Humans, just like you and me. There are other ways to study this soul schism of yours-”_

A familiar stranger’s voice. With it came an image - a wide, circular room offering a few bookshelves and white marble striated with veins of blue. The library - or study, whatever purpose it served - was mostly walled in broad, gently curved windows that permitted a view high up in some snowy mountainside. Flakes blew furiously just outside the glass despite the cruel glitter of wintersun, snow driven by wind from still higher elevations.

A young face, male, skin darker than mine and hair braided into tidy dreadlocks that reminded me of Rhyaz’s, was the source of the memory-voice. That face offered a soft, concerned smile. He looked like a young Oreb, save the more prominent cheekbones and the fullness of feeling that permeated his expression.

A name emerged, associating itself with the face. Aleph.

_Brother. Gone from me. It was a mistake, all of it._

The image faded.

There was nothing on Gielinor that’d ever looked like that. The architecture was off, too open, the glass of an impossible size and curvature. There’d been… machines, too. Sharp little things that whirred softly as they spun, supporting an array of differently-colored, metallic globes that sat suspended from thin wires and revolved around a brightly golden sun.

A memory, but not mine. Charron’s.

Teragard.

I knew. And I raged. Low, deep, pit-settled rage for the smile gone from that world and every other.

“You killed Aleph first.”

A flicker of shock interrupted Charron’s grimace. “It was a mistake. He knew what I’d intended and he _got in the way.”_

I snarled back, feeling the loss of ground against the stream of soul magic and not caring. “You killed your own brother you _miserable fuck!”_

_“I ANSWER TO NO DEFILED CREATURE!”_

_“YOU DESTROYED THE ONLY PERSON WHO WAS EVER PURE ENOUGH FOR YOU!”_

And there it was again - shock. It didn’t disappear from his face as abruptly as the first, but morphed into hideous fury. “I will take them from you, too, little girl. Perhaps I’ll keep the Mahjarrat to study - you somehow afforded this one some of your own soul and I will uncover the mechanism - but first, you two are about to free me from my confinement. Starting… with _you.”_

My tendrils retracted further, backtracking toward me.

Worse, the loathing and contempt that flavored the soul circuit had redoubled. It ate slowly, an aerosolized acid dissolving something fundamental within me. I was no longer being bled out but _disintegrated_.

It was eating through my tendrils. They’d doubled back and begun attacking alongside Charron’s caustic beam.

He’d weaponized Guthix’s energy against me.

Charron spat as he spoke, saliva dotting his own chin and sprinkling the dusky stone in front of his feet. “That’s it. Fight. I will grind you down to your very last, you _shuvoussi ikhassi tooresh-”_

_Hate is the kindling._

_Rage is the fire._

His hate withered like disease through the circuit. Slow. He wanted the fight. Wanted… _a pure fight._

What did fire do? Consumed. Took for itself and made fuel of whatever it found.

_Take._

I smiled. No taut grin, but a smile. Realization rode in atop a wave of adrenaline. “You’d like that fight, wouldn’t you? You’d like to teach me a lesson. Purify the corrupt.”

My tendrils began retracting faster, but had ceased their attack as they returned to me. Charron no longer looked triumphant beneath the rigidity of effort.

My smile broadened. “What if, Charron? What if I just… accept?”

There’d been little sound from behind me once Quen had been freed from the circuit, but Sliske spoke, voice strange in gentle horror. “Don’t-”

I stopped struggling against the current.

Embraced it.

Charron opened his mouth to speak, an inarticulate sound escaping him as the energy being fed into me and returned to him stopped meeting resistance. It hit with a force that knocked me back, severing the connection. I fell as Charron did.

As his _body_ fell.

And his soul became mine. Fused. Melded.

I collapsed on top of Sliske, tremors gripping my limbs.

I/we felt it, the hatred. New and asking for the old, clamoring in my/our head and chest.

_Despise it hate it the touching the vulnerability the animal side the base thing-_

Sliske’s arms went around me/us and Quen’s hand reached for my/our face, and I/we closed my/our eyes against the building pressure.

There was only need. I/we could accept where the hate had long been directed, or choose something new.

_No not new hate hate it with me let us go on-_

Need. It was now, only now, _right now,_ someone new. I/we scrabbled out of Sliske’s embrace toward the bookshelf.

_Mirror I will use the mirror I can’t not them I won’t you can’t take them from me-_

Both of them spoke, shouted, but I stumbled away, hand reaching the shelf as other hands reached me and found purchase.

I had the mirror. There was time. I held it up.

_I can do this. Already there. Akthanakos told me I already feel it about myself. Just more of the same, I can handle it-_

The mirror shattered in my hand, a dark gray, dissipating miasma of shadow left in its place.

I shut my eyes as a hand turned me viciously around, the other reaching my shoulder and shaking me. “Never you! Open your eyes, my heart. Open them and see me.”

“I can’t. Get me out now _just get out OUT!”_

Flat impact clapped my cheek and left a stinging imprint of a hand there. I opened my eyes and looked into twin amber rings set in impossible blackness.

Revulsion rolled within me.

_Hate._

Before I could speak, the twin rings were gone. The chamber itself disappeared, the feeling of hands on my shoulders fading with it.

I looked down over desert terrain, the bubbling cauldron of hate showing deference to elation as I soared over Menaphos’s gate, flying.

I was flying.

I opened my mouth to scream and a raven’s sand-coated cry answered me.

 

         [wingbeats]

 

_...but I won’t settle for an illusory Sliske, if that’s what’s happening. Perhaps it’s time to admit that I’m not what I was, and that I’ve been clinging to what I desire most while stumbling through the wholly bizarre process of introducing myself to the body familiar to only half of me._

_It’s time to assert the facts and distinguish them from wish._

_Sliske broke the mirror. Prevented me from directing the hatred imprint at myself. I don’t know why he didn’t slap me and step aside so I’d imprint upon Quen. He seemed satisfied enough when Quen had distanced himself for those three weeks, and hatred-imprinting on him? Sliske would’ve had me all to himself. There’s no way Quen would’ve been able to endure it._

_I don’t understand Sliske. I love him, but I don’t understand. He’s smug when he’s nestled into my life at the orchestrated exclusion of Quen, he tries to kill me after the Stone of Jas is destroyed at the hands of the Dragonkin, he sacrifices my relative comfort with him to save me from drowning in self-hatred, brings me to Akthanakos, and disappears._

_Anima-fucked, infuriating man. Perhaps he knows. The hatred is part of me now, but with it becoming a true part of my own feeling has come temperance. I think that, given time, I can defeat it._

_Provided he stops doing things that irritate me._

_If I’m right, he’s not gone for good, but the battle through my inheritance is going to be a long one. A few uncharacteristic (are they, are they really?) deviations from his usual modus don’t preclude a return to his old ways. Besides, when has Sliske ever let me have an easy battle with him?_

_Quen visits. He looks troubled when he does, but he hasn’t lost resolve. He’s sworn to weather this thing with me. To adapt to this. He swears he isn’t leaving again, and I believe him._

_I don’t think I’ve lost either of them. My original plan to evade Aris’s foretelling by cards hadn’t been one I’d liked, but events in the bowels of Sophanem’s pyramid - in the Crossing - avoided that._

_Sliske lives, and I believe he’ll come back. Quen lives and remains._

_All I had to do was die._

_To die, and be reborn as this._

_I didn’t inherit all of Charron’s memories, but there are some. Many with Aleph, Oreb’s brother, and the moral regulatory system he provided until his death. He kept Oreb in check, at least to a degree, and I know what little fondness of which he was capable revolved entirely around Aleph._

_His brother was such an embodiment of empathy and kindness, too. A happy man whose eyes were forever trained on the stars when they weren’t memorizing layouts on astronomical charts. A man easily persuaded by fruit brandies and a love of his brother, the latter of which was returned so much as Oreb could manage._

_I retain nothing of Charron's time as Sliske's student. I'm curious more as to why those memories should be purged entire while a fractal pattern of others exists for virtually everything else. Teragard. Oreb's family. Quen._

_There are so many memories. They’re my memories now. So, too, is this infusion of detachment, something I’ve been slow in learning how to manage. Sometimes I rage as I did before the change, sometimes I… don’t. And it’s unsettling._

_My name is Razwan Bahir because that’s whose body I inhabit, but I am no longer she. Nor am I Charron. We have fused souls, becoming one thing, a new thing. I am not Charron or Bahir, but I am utterly determined to retain more of she than of he. My retention gem is still black, but red now undulates within its core. No white, no battle between two distinct emotional bases, but coexistence. Blending. I wish I was at peace with it as my gem appears to be._

_I am no longer the World Guardian, but one of three. We each carry a part of Guthix’s infusion within us. A battlemage, a trickster, a vanguard._

_What does that mean for the world? I don’t know. I don’t know if all three of us are immune from the gods’ influence entirely or just in part. I don’t know that any of us should possess this immunity or wield this power, but the circumstances are what they are._

_I’ve considered taking on a new name to reflect the new being, but I don’t know that it’s worth the trouble of familiarizing everyone with it. Perhaps “Razwan” will keep for now._

_Not a critical decision. There are more important things at hand._

_Among my inheritances are the anjuman. Well, half of them - many died along with Charron’s physical body. I felt them dying; I reached out, but could save only so many._

_I wonder how Sliske knew. He’d picked me up in the Crossing and taken me to Akthanakos’s door. From there, I learned Akthanakos has a similar ability to divide his consciousness between his own body and ugthanki when he sees fit, to see through their eyes and hear through their ears. I’m fortunate that he’s been able to train me in focusing my own mind, to pilot the anjuman at will rather than finding myself suddenly taking wing near Menaphos or hopping around in the Piscatoran woods on little pitpat feet._

_And what little pitpat feet? Only those of Alpha Stare. It also seems I can create new anjuman. I haven’t made another since, but knowing I now connect with the cantankerous being who’d humped his mate while locking stares with me tickles me senseless, a good, rare kind of laughter bearing no burden of jadedness. We share a tiny sliver of my soul._

_I still like that grouchy little fucker._

_For all I do know, there are ten things I don’t. Can Death reap my soul as it exists now? Will I continue to be this one thing if he can? Or will I divide then, returned to two distinct beings? If I can create anjuman, am I also capable of harvesting soul energy? Will I find out involuntarily, the way I discovered I could pilot these soul-bonded creatures when Charron crumpled to the ground and I took flight over the southern desert?_

_Am I a new kind of danger?_

_I despise not knowing, but there is Akthanakos. There is Zamorak, although I wonder what his reaction to me will be. Probably puzzled acceptance, if I know him as well as I think I do._

_There is Quen._

_And, I hope… I think… there is Sliske._

_Perhaps that’s enough._

 

[wingbeats]

 

Wings pumped as I landed on my own outstretched forearm, and I withdrew from the raven’s mind, stilling for the brief moment needed to adjust between the bird’s vision and my human one.

Colors that’d gone missing during my piloting returned in a wash that made my eyes ache. It was always like this, but I’d learned to accept it as part of the transition. The sun had begun dipping below the horizon, and everything was painted bronze and orange in the fading light.

Ślepowron had been Oreb’s. I remembered he’d been reluctant around his old master, never staying once Oreb had withdrawn his presence. Though I’d returned entirely to my human body, ‘Powron elected to stay perched on my arm. He seemed satisfied with me.

Pollnivneach was relatively quiet. A few milled about between stalls, but my return wouldn’t be seen by many. None, if I took the little path behind Ihali’s restaurant.

I felt a presence behind, and a hand rested on my shoulder before I could turn. A voice, a welcome and irritating voice, spoke.

“Nothing gentle blooms in the desert, my heart. Our contract still stands, although I’d like to think the three of us have dispensed with the need for lies. Do you still have room for me between those thorns?”

I couldn’t look at him, not yet. I couldn’t risk knowing. Knowing if the imprint was as damning as it had been when he’d slapped me and I’d opened my eyes.

I couldn’t hurt him.

‘Powron looked over my shoulder from his perch on my forearm, untroubled and curious, as I answered the voice behind me. I shared in my anjuman's vision and took in Sliske’s face, just a glimpse, and withdrew again.

“I’m fighting for you. Let me fight, and give me time. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to see.”  
  
The hand on my shoulder fell away, and breath stirred the hair around my ear. I felt teeth press gently into my neck, followed by a kiss. “Then I will wait for you.”

There was no sound, no shift of sand, but I knew he’d left.

I whispered anyway. “I love you, too.”

‘Powron extended his wings and I lifted my arm, letting him go. Breeze shifted my hair and the half-cape that hid my legs from behind as I walked into Pollnivneach, nodding at the occasional passerby as I returned to my tent.

To Quen.

To home.

**Author's Note:**

> Two notes - one, the very ending scene in the third chapter can be largely credited to Tribunus, who drew THE dopest Razwan Bahir in her new armor with her raven anjuman on her arm. Right there in a Pollnivnean sunset. Tribs, you are gold.
> 
> Two - Sliske's words - "nothing gentle blooms in the desert" - are taken from a gift fic from the lovely RedLady (Diana.) A birthday fic become absolutely canon.
> 
> Both of these people are wonderful writers and creators in their own right, and helped make this all the better. <3


End file.
